Classic Toy Trains September 2021

WHEN WE STARTED WORKING FROM HOME because of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, I had such grand plans. I had projects I wanted to finish around the house, and a number of them involved my railroad. Finally, I’ll be able to get them done, I thought. I’ll be at home; there’s nowhere to go; I’ll have plenty of time. You can stop me if you’ve heard this one already. About 18 months later, we’re getting ready to go back to the office on a part-time basis, and guess what? Many of those projects remain undone, including some that were started before things got weird. Part of me says, “You really didn’t make very good use of your time.” Another says, “You did have actual work to do.” I’m not sure which part to…

IN THE ARTICLE ABOUT THE Baby Ruth billboard refrigerator car, the relationship between Lionel and Curtiss Candy Co., which made Baby Ruth, was confused. During the prewar and postwar eras, Curtiss paid Lionel to put the Baby Ruth name on boxcars as well as placards used on the nos. 156 station platform, 256 freight station, and 356 operating freight station. (This arrangement was similar to Sunoco and Gulf paying Lionel to have their logos appear on Lionel tank cars.) This was paid advertising and not a royalty as was printed. Furthermore, John Brady, who served as products manager at Lionel during the 1970s and ’80s, noted in the fourth volume of Lionel: A Collector’s Guide and History that Lionel did not pay royalties to companies whose names were used on the…

THAT SOUNDS LIKE A WIDEOPEN question, and the answer can make someone a million bucks (more or less). But let’s be realistic – the past 30 years of this hobby have pretty well covered all the categories consumers may be interested in. Locomotives? Nah! Our wildest dreams have been fulfilled for the most part. We have scale- and traditional-sized Big Boys and Challengers; the very latest diesels on the market have been made in O gauge; and if you run a railroad with overhead catenary, there are boxcabs, rectifiers, and GG1s aplenty. Passenger cars? Not really. We have high-end stream-liners and low-end heavy-weights. Oldtimey rail-roads have Overton cars, and modern passenger operators have Horizon, Super-liner, and Amfleet cars in several schemes. If there’s one Amtrak car I’d like to see, it’s that…

FRED DAILEY’S O GAUGE LAYOUT Once upon a time, the trains rolling through Fred Dailey’s hometown of Etters, Pa., usually featured Pennsylvania RR engines on the point. After the demise of the Pennsy in the middle 1960s came the Penn Central, and still later, Conrail. But on Fred’s O gauge layout, skillfully photographed by his daughter Teresa Hanna, the so-called “Standard Railroad of the World” still dominates freight and passenger service. While Pennsy diesels lead a short train on the upper level of his display, another freight resplendent in the railroad’s acclaimed Tuscan red rolls through town on the multi-track main line. BILL CLARK’S S GAUGE LAYOUT Anyone who read Bill Clark’s outstanding columns in S Gaugian magazine – and will soon be enjoying his contributions to Classic Toy Trains – knows that…

A YEAR AFTER MTH ELECTRIC TRAINS’ owner Mike Wolf announced his plan to depart the industry, a significant portion of the company is relocating from its Columbia, Md., facility to a new one in Elkridge, Md., while another part continues to operate in Michigan. The Elkridge location will house the “new” MTH Electric Trains, managed by a few longtime employees. It will continue marketing and producing new model train products. Also in the Maryland facility will be MTH Parts & Sales LLC. The company will feature an all-new website with an online ordering platform. It’s expected to go live this summer. MTH Electric Trains’ R&D Division will continue developing DCS and other electronic products on its own in the satellite location it has occupied in western Michigan for the past 24 years. New products…

AFTER CANCELING THE PAST THREE SEMI-ANNUAL MEETS IN YORK, PA., the Eastern Division of the Train Collectors Association is preparing to host a grand reopening show Oct. 21-23 at the York Fairgrounds. The organization’s board has decided “to return to the pre-pandemic format of a three-day show; beginning at Noon on Thursday through Saturday,” according to its Summer 2021 TCA e*Train newsletter. Setup in the dealer halls will begin Wednesday, and Thursday morning in the member halls. Some health-related precautions in place. Tables will be spaced 6 feet apart to allow for social distancing protocols. Additionally, each member hall has had two rows of tables removed. For those with a table, their chair will no longer be in the walkways. Tables will be separated with a space in the center of each row…